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\n\t\tOpinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.\t<\/p>\n
A lawyer, a banker and a tech entrepreneur walk into a restaurant.<\/p>\n
It sounds like the setup for a bad joke. For Bo Davis, it became the start of MarginEdge<\/a>.<\/p>\n After selling a software company, Davis was living in London when he and two friends began talking about what to do next. The lawyer convinced the group to open a restaurant, so they hired the executive chef from a favorite restaurant, moved to Washington, D.C., and launched their first Wasabi location.<\/p>\n But that partnership didn\u2019t last long.<\/p>\n \u201cThe lawyer lasted 60 days,\u201d Davis says. \u201cThe banker lasted a year. I like to tell people I was clearly the least intelligent of the three, because 20 years later I\u2019m still in the restaurant business.\u201d<\/p>\n Over the next decade, Davis became an owner-operator, opening roughly a dozen restaurants under the Wasabi brand across the country. Along the way, he discovered firsthand how difficult it was to assess a restaurant\u2019s financial health.<\/p>\n Everything looked good on paper: dining rooms were busy,\u00a0The Washington Post<\/em>\u00a0ran three features on his restaurants and guests kept coming back. <\/span><\/p>\n \u201cWe thought we were making money,\u201d Davis says. \u201cWe weren\u2019t making as much money as we thought we were making.\u201d<\/p>\n With a background in software, Davis started building internal systems to track expenses and monitor restaurant performance across multiple markets.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was ugly,\u201d Davis says. \u201cIt was not MarginEdge.\u201d<\/p>\n But it was the beginning. <\/p>\n As the restaurant group expanded into markets including California, Boston, Florida and D.C., those homegrown systems gave Davis and his team visibility into their business every day instead of waiting until the end of the month to understand how they had performed.<\/p>\n That idea eventually became MarginEdge<\/a>.<\/p>\n When Davis and his future co-founder started MarginEdge, they kept hearing the same thing: restaurant invoices were too messy. <\/p>\n Too many vendors. Too many products. Too many substitutions. Too many SKUs.<\/p>\n \u201cThere was no way you could automate the synchronization of all that information,\u201d Davis says. \u201cWe were like, \u2018Bullshit, we can do it.’\u201d<\/p>\n More than a decade later, MarginEdge processed 290,000 invoices in a single week. <\/p>\n If the price of tomatoes changes, restaurants can see exactly what that means for the cost of a burger. Behind the scenes, MarginEdge combines AI and machine learning with a team of roughly 700 people who handle the exceptions that technology alone can\u2019t solve.<\/p>\n Today, the company supports more than 12,000 restaurants. For Davis, though, the technology has never been the point.<\/p>\n \u201cWe are not a software company,\u201d he says. \u201cWe want to be a service.\u201d<\/p>\n That philosophy comes from his years as a restaurant operator. Every restaurant owner wants guests to leave happy. Davis believes technology companies serving restaurants should hold themselves to the same standard.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is our job to serve restaurant owners the way they serve their clients,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n MarginEdge now helps restaurants track purchases, sales, inventory, recipes, accounting and cash flow from one platform, giving operators a clearer picture of their business every day instead of waiting until the end of the month.<\/p>\n The company also introduced a new business credit card designed to automatically capture restaurant expenses, helping operators track purchases that often fall outside traditional invoicing workflows.<\/p>\n For Davis, it\u2019s another step toward solving the same problem that frustrated him years ago while running Wasabi: giving restaurant operators confidence that they know exactly what\u2019s happening inside their business.<\/p>\n Restaurant Influencers<\/em><\/a>\u00a0is brought to you by Toast, the powerful restaurant point-of-sale and management system that helps restaurants improve operations, increase sales and create a better guest experience.<\/p>\n Toast \u2014 Powering Successful Restaurants. Learn more about\u00a0Toast<\/a>.<\/p>\n Restaurant Influencers is proud to have PepsiCo as a sponsor of this episode. Partnering with PepsiCo Foodservice helps restaurant operators drive sustainable growth through smarter digital experiences, AI-backed menu optimization, and tools designed to create more profitable online orders.<\/p>\nThe invoice myth<\/h2>\n
About\u00a0Restaurant Influencers<\/em><\/h2>\n